If I could have five minutes on my own in St Peter’s Basilica I’d spend them in prayer before Michelangelo’s Pieta. It is the most exquisite piece of art that I have ever seen. I still kick myself for not ever having risen from my sleep early enough to arrive before the crowds who flood … Continue reading Embodying Sorrow With Perfect Love – The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.
The term “Domestic Church” refers to the family, the smallest body of gathered believers in Christ. Though recovered only recently, the term dates all the way back to the first century AD. The Greek word ecclesiola referred to “little church.” Our Early Church Fathers understood that the home was fertile ground for discipleship, sanctification, and … Continue reading Reawakening the Domestic Church
When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn,Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings,The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will;Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still. … Continue reading The Donkey – By G.K Chesterton
“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I have been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” - … Continue reading Learning Life’s Lessons Through Simplicity.
In the modern Western Church calendar the 26th July is kept as the Feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, the grandparents of Jesus Christ and the holy parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary. For many centuries all over the Catholic and Byzantine world, St Anne has been one of the most intimate and popular saints. Wherever … Continue reading Grandmother of Christ – The Tradition of St Anne throughout the ages.
“There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.” J.R.R. Tolkien Most of us are familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic literary masterpiece, the Lord of the Rings, having either read the books … Continue reading The Seed of Courage – Tolkien’s Hope in Abiding Apocalypse
hubris: hjuːbrɪs: excessive pride or self confidence • (in Greek tragedy) excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis. nemesis: ˈnɛmɪsɪs/ the inescapable agent of someone's or something's downfall. We live in a time of hubris. As a society, we have become enamoured with the goal of self actualisation. Apparently, this is … Continue reading Do You Know Who You Are?
What do you get when you put a fiery redheaded Texan woman, her husband, their unlikely conversion to Catholicism, and their six children together? You get One Beautiful Dream, which tells the shambolic and endearing journey of Jennifer Fulwiler in writing her conversion story Something Other Than God. Yet her latest release is more than … Continue reading Cultivating The Passion In Your Heart is Not An Impossible Dream – Book Review
As a Catholic woman, I have always been exasperated by the cultural assumption that I must be, well, oppressed in some way. ‘The Church hates women- that’s why we hate the Church’ cries the zeitgeist… but I’m a part of the Church. Does that mean you hate me? A woman? ‘The Church sees women as intellectually … Continue reading Book Review – Hard Sayings, A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties by Trent Horn
Welcome once again to our (mostly) weekly post where we look around the vast realms of the internet to find you a gem or two. Today is is the feast of Candlemas. The presentation of Jesus in the temple. The purification of Mary. As it says in the explanatory link : "Although this is a … Continue reading Around the Web – Week 5, 2018
